Köpenhamn! København! Copenhagen!

Copenhagen was an amazing city! My friend Sara from Cal Poly is studying there for the semester so I was able to visit her (free housing and food yay!) for a few days.


Me and Sara on the bus.

The first day there we went around the city at night. It was really dark of course, because Scandinavia hates the sun. But it has a beautiful city center with a little river and colorful houses alongside (like many European cities...). Here is the downtown center. I thought it was funny that they they had a Christmas tree that had lights that you had to power by biking (they had bikes all around the tree) but around the cities there were huge neon signs every where, as you can see.

They are having the Climate Conference this week so their motto right now is, "Hopenhagen." Which, by the way, the carbon footprint for is ridiculous (famous people riding in in private jets and limos). I thought this sign was cute.


They also have these huge pictures here (also wasting energy by lighting them up every night) of 100 places that will disappear in 100 years.

The photos were all amazing, and Big Sur was on there :D It started raining...and didn't really stop. But thats how we roll in Scandinavia.


Once night hit (previous pictures were from 3-4pm...even though it looks like night) we went to hang out with some real Danish people! Andreas studied at Cal Poly for a semester last year, and now he is dating one of my chemistry friends. So we called him and he and his friend Simon showed us around.
Simon and Andreas: Best Danish tour guides we could have asked for!


They showed us the city life of Copenhagen. We went to different pubs and bars, and since we didn't have bikes they let us ride on the back of theirs (me and Sara tried to do this later in Uppsala and it failed terribly). My favorite place they took us was to A-bar. Which was this Australian bar. I got my picture with some famous Aussies...


The next day we went to the little hippie town Christiania.
It's this old military housing that was abandoned and taken over by hippies. They are trying to become their own nation. They like to claim they are not apart of the EU. As you leave the area there is a little sign that says "You are now entering the EU"... silly hippies.


The red with three yellow dots is their symbol-thing.

It's all over the place on flags and stickers etc. Here is a picture of the mens bathroom

Ya it's just out in public...the guys just pee right on the ground. So gross.

The whole town is kind of a dump, but...artsy at the same time. It's all covered in spray paint, houses that looked like they were built with only sticks and mud, and a collection of junk that used to have a purpose, but now is just "art."

Here are some pictures of the "art"

I have to admit I kind of like this one...well I liked most of the things I took pictures of, but in general the city just looks like trash to me. But this...this is awesome. A random pokemon-like-statue floating on the lake that Chrisitiania surrounds...pure awesomeness.

I kind of liked this one too...
Old wheelbarrow turned to inspirational art...

Childrens play area...

I thought this sign was funny because it was in the middle of a lake...

I was definitely glad I got to see a place like Christiania, but I definitely don't agree with the politics behind it. When I asked my Danish friend Andreas how this community was able to pull something off like that (like how they have their own laws and all) he said, "that's a good question Megan." Not even Danish people know how this was pulled off. Marijuana is legal within the community, but illegal outside of Christiania. They sell it in Christiania and anyone could just take it outside of the community. While I was there I saw a dad lift his little kid (probably around 2 years old) above a table of hash so that the little kid could see it all. I just thought it was wrong. The kid was so little!

For our night activities Sara got us concert tickets to see Caspa. It some electro music that I'm not a big fan of, but it was still really fun. We took a taxi there with her friend Susie. Here is a picture of the cab ride:


the night was good, but I had more fun experiencing the city during the day. To get around we would ride the metro. They have a really great metro system that gets you around the town really quickly. It was really fun to ride at the front because of all the lights and all. But the little kids always wanted to go to the front, so we decided not to be selfish and let the babies go to the front and instead took pictures of them. They are soooo cute in their little snow outfits. They can barely move, it's really funny to watch. The only downside is that it is kind of pricey if you use it regularly. But they almost never check your ticket so somtimes we would just hop on the metro and hope to not get caught, Sara and I dubbed this Ridin' Dirty on the metro. We took a Ridin' Dirty picture on oen of the metros:
The next day we hung out inside most of the day getting a little homework done. Then Andreas showed us where to get a delicious Danish hot dog: Ketchup, mustard, mayo, cheese, onions, fried onions, and pickels... MMMMM!

we went to the oldest theme park in Scandinavia: Tivoli! They had a nice christmas market with lots of lights. Weeping willows are my favorite and I've never seen them covored in lights before--it was really awesome. It was nice to walk around and drink gløgg (mulled wine...it's huge in Scandinavia, especially Denmark).

Then I slept, went on a canal tour in the monring, then back to Uppsala for a couple days before going to the Artic Circle.

Overall even though Copenhagen was really great, I still like Uppsala more. I suppose it is becoming a bit of a home for me :)